Historical Fiction

I love history. To me it is endlessly fascinating, the never ending chronicle of the triumphs and tragedies of mankind, filled with adventure, courage, cowardice, wisdom, folly and all those elements that make great novels. I therefore find it distressing that so many people think history is dull and are indifferent or even hostile to it. Distressing but understandable. Too many historians seem to write with the unstated desire to make their subject matter as dull and dreary as they can manage. A useful corrective to this are good historical novels, which can often awake in readers a love of history. One of the great practioners of the craft was Rafael Sabatini.

Writing at the end of the Nineteenth and the first half of the Twentieth, Sabatini wrote with color and verve and his historical novels, the best known of which is Captain Blood, were historically accurate as well as being vastly entertaining. Children can often come to love history if it is demonstrated to them that it does not have to be dull, and a great historical novel can help accomplish this. Continue reading →